On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 19:20:52 -0500, Drew, Bill <drewwe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I have noticed something different on a couple of linux lists in the way > people write replies to messages. > The replies are always at the bottom after the quoted part of the > earlier message. This is no the rule on the many other lists I > subscribe to. I am more curious as to why this is the case. This is > not a complaint at all. > > Bill Drew I think that in context replies are the most useful for replies to list emails. This makes things very much like a conversation and it is clear what part of the reply goes with what other part. However, for communications between two people or a small group, I prefer top posting. In that case, the person I'm replying to should know the context of my reply since they sent the original message. This puts the emphasis on the reply, since it is at the top. If they cannot remember what they wrote, they can scroll down and see or look in their Sent Items folder. The signature: > A: Because we read from top to bottom. > Q: Why should you bottom post. Makes perfect sense if you already know the question, that is, if you asked it : ). The problem with lists is that it's not a private conversation, so someone might not know the context and bottom or context posting makes more sense for someone not in on the conversation yet. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that in here. Wasn't sure where to stick it, so I just replied to the original post. A thought on HTML messages... Would it be difficult incredibly for the list to strip the HTML and either only send out the text MIME part, or extract the text from the HTML and send only that along to the list recipients? This doesn't seem like it would not be a hard thing to do. And it would make the archives not choke on HTML messages, and not annoy people who don't like HTML messages. Any other thoughts? Jonathan
